Diane's Favorite Fabric Quilt

Have you ever loved a fabric so much that you designed a whole quilt around showcasing it?  That is exactly what Diane did.    This flower and butterfly print called to her and she came up with a lovely way to highlight it,

Diane chose the blue Crackle wide backing that I had on hand and asked me to pick a floral pantograph.  I thought the Lilac pantograph complimented the top very nicely.

 

Red Pandas

This absolutely adorable Red Panda quilt was made by Reneta.  This is a new release from Art East Pattern Company and Reneta was one of the testers for this pattern.  

Before Reneta even had this top together she asked if there was a bamboo pantograph out there that might work on this quilt.  A quick search of the Urban Elementz site led me to the Bamboo design by Patricia E. Ritter. It was exactly what Reneta had in mind and I had plenty of time to order it in.

Thread choice can be challenging on quilts with contrasting colors, but a green thread that matched the green plants in the piecing blended nicely across the quilt.

Seriously, how cute is this quilt? 

Love Stinks

This quilt was one that Reneta did as a pattern tester this winter.  The pattern is called Love Stinks and is a new release from Art East Quilting Company.

I think this one is just too adorable!  Reneta selected a new pantograph in my collection called Ginger Hearts.  It is a nice open design that I think will become very popular.

I just love the "stink heart" that is formed between the two skunks.

 

Flying Tiger

Reneta made this "Flying Tiger" quilt as pattern tester for Art East Quilting Company's new spring releases.  When Reneta first showed me the pattern and we got talking about colors and quilting ideas, the idea to lean in the to "2022 is the year of the Tiger" inspired everything else.  

I love the rich red background fabric and I immediately wanted to quilt with my favorite shiny gold Magnifico thread and Reneta agreed. 

 

The pantograph is called Ginseng and it added just the right amount of quilting.  It gave the background kind of a brocade feel.

 

Plaid-ish Quilt

This fabulous "Plaid-ish" quilt was a team effort between sisters Eileen and Deann.  (The quilt's eventual home with be on Deann's bed.)  The pattern for the quilt is a free tutorial from Kitchen Table Quilting.

For success with this pattern you need to divide youR fabrics into distinct Lights, Mediums and Darks.  To make that process less overwhelming, Eileen and Deann used one fabric for the lights - the light grey batik, and for the darks they only used fabrics with black backgrounds and some multi coloured print.  Those two choices make selecting the medium tone on tone prints from Eileen's "Fabric Pantry" much easier and more fun.

Eileen left the pantograph choice up to Deann, and Gingersnap was the choice with a shiny teal Magnifico thread.

Now I wonder who will be stitching all the binding down?

 

 

Front Porch Quilt

I had the pleasure of adding some custom quilting to Holly's  "Front Porch Quilt."  The pattern is from Quilter's Candy and utilizes the 3-D flying geese method in which the two short edges of the geese are folded and open (flapping) on the quilt top.  

Holly knew exactly what she wanted for the quilting, and we talked about the pros and cons of leaving the geese edges open and floppy and the decision was that they should be stitched down.  Holly stitched them down before bringing the top to me, which saved me a lot of extra time and therefore reduced the quilting fee for Holly.

My Innova longarm has a feature that I don't often pay attention to.  In addition to keeping track of the lifetime of stitches that the machine has taken,  I can reset this second counter to see how many stitches I put into an individual project.    Holly's quilt was 53" x 69"  and it took 193,530 stitches to add the pebbles and curls!  Thankfully once I put the machine into manual mode and get into the zone I do find pebbles quilt relaxing to quilt. 

It is so fun when a client comes to me when a very specific vision for a quilt and I can bring it to life for them.

 

Pedal to the Metal

Reneta, Amy and Shalane joined forces to make this crisp modern Pedal to the Metal quilt.  The quilt is a gift for a lucky coworker.  The group quickly agreed on the Bora bora pantograph and I was off to do my part.

The Pedal to the Metal pattern by Highway 10 Designs utilizes strip piecing for a fast, low stress make.  I love the focus fabric that was chosen - cute penguins, polar bear, trees and igloos.

A lovely thoughtful gift!

 

Wrapped in Love

 

Angela made this adorable baby quilt for her granddaughter.  The pattern is called Wrapped in Love and is from the book "A Piece of Cake" by Peta Peace.

Angela selected the Pieces of My Heart Pantograph and we used a pale peach thread.  The backing is a cute flannel print that matches so nicely.

Schoolhouse Quilt

This lovely Schoolhouse quilt was brought to me by Angela.  The top was pieced by Angela's dear friend Anne who has passed away.  Angela requested custom quilting as she felt that is how Anne would have finished it.  Anne and Angela's husband were friends and both in the Education field so this quilt holds an extra special meaning to both of them.

I sent Angela a number of quilting suggestions for the borders and she immediately loved the outer echo curve border, and the simple quilting in the HST border.  We went back and forth on the inner border and ended up with this egg and dart design.  The soft green sheet that Angela sent for the backing shows off the quilting designs perfectly!

The positive/negative fabric selections for the houses was really unique and had me scratching my head for a long time about how to handle them.  I would have loved to know Anne's vision for this quilt.  I didn't come to a final decision about the quilting on the houses until the quilt was on my machine and the border quilting was in place.  The quilting is only on the background fabric which is sometimes the background and sometimes the main body of the schoolhouse.

I had fun playing with a variety of design ideas to try to make all of the houses a little different just like all of the different fabrics Anne selected for the quilt.  I am including lots of pictures to try to let you see all the interesting features of this quilt.